horizon. i'm sure many of you have seen or heard regularly in the news. my father came from iran so every time i see those headlines and get an article in my e mail i have this moment of panic thinking about my family members in iran who might be the next victims of this terrible war administration this is, disaster on the horizon. it begins with words. daggers of men who bleed their nations of hope kill any promise. here is war, a bag full of hate posturing angry man rhetoric unleashing disaster on the horizon. war has no face like a genie it

doesn't go back in the bottle. the witchary gives nothing it is a tornado that sucks up life, spits out ashes and broken minds i can feel in my bones. near as anyone who's face i see who's eyes i hold tight fixod this comp us i see the war coming breaking lose in the mouths. they are monsters who can't see the people who will weep. they're are creators of the destruction that begins on the tongue and ends in the cold eyes of tomorrow. [applause] >> last year, i read 9 stories in my allotted 6 minutes this year i thought i would be ambitious and do 10. first is called cosmology. after they learned that the universe was a mass produced toy tossed by a goddess they no longer wondered by laws was sure

in the clockwork in a wind up bird were shot with uncertainties. optimists contributed the reason to the fact that the toy was broken. pessimists acknowledged this. but insistd that in it's broken state could the cosmos belong to those who lives within. the goddess grown found the universe under board games in a closet. she did not give it to her children. she did not have it fixed by her husband instead slipping away now and then from her family she delighted in the haphazard way it ran. the release in her life. >> the next one is entitled. explanation. twisted tree branches explain

exactly themselves. the next is called, a simple story. his love was too simple. if he met a woman who imagined what it would it be like to be her husband. he learned she was already attached. if she did interest in him he would bring her fresh oranges. she'd leave him certain that no man could love truly to such scant evidence. his evidence was not meager he was not trying to judge her. his love was too simple and he belonged to her simply if her love was as simple as his. immigration. their final night together before she had to go back home, she clung to him as if he were a mighty sclif and between them

and morning was an awful abyss. as they slept though neither felt it happening by dawn not even their finger tips were touching. he shivered and reached for her. the woman's hazy blue ice opened one at a time they took a while to focus when they did they appeared not to be looking at his skin but surveying a foreign land. >> this is called, regrets. if only she known as on her deathbed she would not find the love of her life she would have reached the same great age but never have lived. next is retirement. the pampered old cat slept day and night happily dreaming about

napping. [laughter] and slightly shorter than that called, quartery. >> the bug that crawled across the key board didn't leave word. the next story is a second chance. after their myth was written, echo was permitted to mayor nar sisz who spurned herrode to be shunned by his own cold reflection. she tried not to fret that vanity diminished him. what would have been the thrill and mystery thrilled her nippled body leaving a mockary of a voice. she carried him back to her cavern, still, there lives together was wanting and not only because in their condition they had trouble conceiving

children. they became astranged though she longed to give him everything and he was eager to take it all. each sought the other through a different mirror. >> called : what happened happened. and finally. [laughter] a story called terminals. in the last moment of his life, time slowed and slowed to a halt. no longer pressed as he has been in youth he strolled the youth on foot and thought over every thought. love and war and stars he grabbed the meaning of it all as a whole. he yearned to share what he knew.

though that lived on and might have learned moved to a future where his still voice would not be heard. thank you. [applause] >> hello. i'm going to read a scene from draining the sea coming out in march. it takes place in guatemala during the 80's. this is a scene from the polytechnic the tick cal school where they would take the disappeared. emanuel for the americas. we are inside the basement of the polytechnic and i'm admiring the bone is thattedose that your heal bone makes in the sunlight in the palms of my hand in my mind. when you come to my bed your hands and breath is sweet and we can love like this for hours. i can find christ in your body.

this too must be constructed and killed bike on television with pain and blood that's beautiful like a red refer. you made me into a woman and i surend erred into it a man-made into a woman and returned. but you don't want to my bed this is the metal cloth you are chained to in the polytechnic. and i do we do it slowly with timed extensions of christ, his face removed and his penis removed the maggets and the wounds the teeth and hair weeks before he is your christ in the black pit with you. each day becomes eternity of days the sun never sets or rises the light bulb on a wire as i burn you 117 times with my cigarettes while the other

guards have gone out for a meal beef stake tomatoes and red wines then i will ask for your for giveness. you look at me or rather you stair at me, make a picture on my eyelids and my disks covering my ice to the pupils through the tinted lenses. i wear the sun glasses in the room so this look a stair i have said, and a beast looks from his bodied cage where pain is made to a commodity of sugary things. your head pulled from the basin of water your breath can make me into our god but a god without rivers a god without shadows shadow lonely on his thrown

making you look more the whore. i whisper into the hole beneath the cracked blood and bonus. is it possible for me to also be saved? you begin wretching the vomit heaths you up from the cot where you were held by the chain you cannot stop the wretching continuing shaking of your arms. the hands not removed yet. i take the bottle of wine which i have been drinking and toss it down your throat as you begin crying like a child. crying but not speaking to me you remind me of my black self. tears and your mouth a gap like a bird as i put the wine in your mouth and we drink the rest of it together. the unsainted god the sobbing

girl there in the dark i hold you closely and we are like lovers. your ear shells on the floor next to my booted feet. my own hands handy work. after work i will have these specimens saved. i go to a tax dermist shop when the man gives a look of hear when i pull out the ear shells. he refused to do it. i return it later and unmake his look say, i will never do it again your ear shells forgotten in the trash bin of the polytechnic where i toss them of history. days later i'm convinced i see one hand carried by a rat. seeking the traces of your body and the animals is this not a

form of transcendence my darling. a downward rising the maggets small white gods like an animal mob. you did not answer my question with the language we used between us you vomited and stared into the lenses i wore to cover my pupils to keep some things in and some things out plastic screens. was it not possible to make love in that space. i could save you and i do make an essay and listened and obeyed. i hoped to carry your ear shell with me. i read the manual from beginning to end a manual for the master's and the slaves much the master hates the slave. not the [inaudible] we would like your spirit. it is what we seek in the dark pits of the capital.

what else could be accomplished or desired. the speaking the words i make you utter all of the language we use between us this not what i'm after. i will not pretend. information like a dog and we beat and kill the dog, no it's you i want that with held piece. what shall i call it except love. why cant you give it to me? why? even at the end the pit's death defeated you it howls in the night even then when your vagina has been opened like a ripe plum. why? how? do you still with hold it from me. i'm only a man after all and i cannot live without it a school boy of these americas. thank you. [applause] >> take us to the back woods of

georgia where i believe it's the first week of hunting season. in 1955, the spanish explorer desocietio arrived in south that >> with wild pigs in tow. in 2004 in georgia a 12 foot, hundred thousand pound pig was killed. it's unclear whether this pig, hog zila got that big while grazing in the wild or whether he was fed peanuts farm fed or 43 range. when the pigs flair a griffin was asked why he had to shoot the pig. griffin said, because i couldn't believe it was so big. i grew up 20 miles away in a town that put martin luther king in jail for a few nights in

1963. when they heard the story of hog zila i wondered why people killed things they don't understand. i would like to read hog zila this is the first timei've read this part one is what i'm reading today. killer of kid and faun, muddy wallower trichinosis and tick. trap smart, nonnative gar gant wan flea bag you root in the oak brush of bogs and swamp. if we killed you now, hog zila, if we took aim for your belly with our cross bow or laser sight and pulled a trigger or let a tripped arrow rip through the night air there wouldn't be a story to tell. while we lay and wait for you to appear, chewing our ciao and the

fat lit up on beer, lit up on the last of the evening light. we will harness you in speech, laszo you with language and make you bleed like the common pig you were before all this celebrity. in dreams you are bigger than you will ever be. you must be made to suffer for your mystery. the origin of hogzila. are you spawn of desoto men? long snouted do your upper tusks sharpen the lower. or did you escape from an aptwau son of a son injected with gonad troepin. black tusks and tell tall tale. did your thousand pound body

weigh less filtering out of your brilliant nostrils uncontained as a new myth. your solitary except for one season. your domestic kin it's unfairly for them. your untoward piglets 3 times a year, careless love that's ugly and stinky and don't look smart much the ghost of hogzila. in the middle month of the year the bore the ghost roams killed because he was huge. why must we shoot what we don't understand? remember the lion blinded by the showing of the baghdad zoo, set free wanderer.

hogzila was strachlelled or a smoothy after pine through the dry cleaning or nosing the rows of baby food watching as humans enact all the sad and lonely erands of our lines among the plastic singing trout and the caged parakeets the twin poodles yap nothing a locked mercedes. all ghost wanted was a stand of trees, bark to rub against and a scattering of a corns. a corns fall from oaks and we cut those down. hogzila murderer speaks. i summon you from the swamp and holler. a red cheeked salamander in your stomach. when i saw you i littered up my rifle with buck shot and took aim. you were the most beautiful hog

i had seen that's why i had to make you die to convince my friends of high heroism. i had not done in life cleaning up beer cans after the hunters left. but as i told that lady from the new york times after offering her fanta, which she refused, the whole country will eat humble pie after the scientists dig up the body of hogzila and see the greetness of exactly what i have done. thanks. >> it's a pleasure to be here. i will jump right into this. i figured anticipation of halloween i would read a story about witches this is the beginning and ending of a story questions of lawed blue fly. coming home from school on a monday morning in spring saddy stepped through a hole in the

school yard fence on to the hem of her dress. when she straightened the left sleeve separated. her brother heard it rip. he turned and saw his little sister's bony shoulder naked to the world. saddy stood trembling her black eyes 2 burnt holes the leave of her only school dress hanging by threads. madison grinned. now you done it. he pick the the ripped sleeve from her arm and let it call again. you should tear the other side then they would be the same. be quiet. you could be a fancy woman. he leaned down his hot breath in her ear you could be a bear breasted hoar. saddy staired at her feet. i saw this fancy woman once madison said. he put his arm around her sister

and guided her along the path. she took all the feeling from a man's toes. she gave him a foot rub. when she got to the toes she put them in her mouth. saddy squinted at her brother. it's true. one by one she sucked them and they were dirty. but when she was done you know what? the man started hollering he says, i cannot feel my toes. he jumps up and waddels like a turkey. he didn't know he didn't have any toes anymore. madison grinned the woman was a witch much the fields were soft to the touch. all the way home madison told his sister about the witches and

the world. when the saudi came to view he stopped talking the door was open the inside shadowy. there was no one in sight but he could hear his sister in law kth rin talking to blue flies. madison tucked his chin as if against the weather. something about the air felt dense. something felt like pushing against water on a flooded plain. well, a lot happens between now and the next morning i will sum it up quickly. madison's sister in law, kith rin refuses to fix saddy's dress and saddy has to wear it to school like that the next day which embarrasses her. madison and katherine had a flirtation going on his sister

in law is a few years older than him. next day madison feels sorry from saddy he decides he will sew up her sleeve for her. so this happens walking to school. slowly, saddy unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to her feet. she watched her brother sew because his fingers were stiff and cold and would not move he jabbed them again and again and when the blood came he sucked it until it was gone much the stitches were jag ed some tiny dots some long lines. the sleeves tucks too far in so the sleeve cuffed high on her wrist. material bunched at her neck giving it a hump. she had a lopsided look but

smiled at her brother. all that morning madison watched his sister where she sat with the younger children her sleeve a bump on her shoulder. he thought how it used to be when they lived in town with their own man. a lot of the time it was madison and saddy alone in the house. mark would get money and their dad would go off on a drunk. mornings then the sun rose behind saddy's highs she would say, maddy you are hungry. he would say what time is it? she would say, time to go hunting. sometimes they did went hunting and didn't go to school just the 2 of them they took the short cut home that afternoon much the morning rain had blown over and the fields steamed in the

afternoon heat. yellow dandy lions dotted the sage brush and the moist earth sucked their shoes. maddy grinned thinking about what katherine might say. she would say, maddy did you do this? he would say, yes , i did. as they got closer to home, he saw smoke blazing into the sky where the saudi would be. they had built the fire she and his brother mark. saddy was walking ahead. madison looked at the drunken line of stitches on her sleeve the crook ed seam and the knot of material that rode her shoulder like a hump much the air began to feel thick like water. wait. he grabbed her arm and picked at

the stitches he had made. saddy tried to wrench away but he picked frantically at her sleeve and the dark fury the new look that made him shiver that was not her sister came into her eyes. he didn't let go, this is no good don't worry. madison picked andtory the thread until it came loose and the blue fly witch could not tell what he had done. saddy went limp. she stared off toward the poppy mark had planted which stuck like finger bones out of the earth. thank you. >> hi. nice to be here. i came on the 14 mission bus. to spend 6 minutes with you.

[laughter]. if there is time left over after my reading i will do knife tricks. [laughter]. short story from my collection, called love. this is a typical sunday night in the mission. rose colored dreams. what is juanita doing selling roses in the mission. wine colored, blood colors and pink roses wrapped in cellophane stuck in a plastic bucket half his size. 10 years looked like 30 stamped on his forehead a strong wind could blow him to daly city. the town of his birth. all the regular customers, the soft bellied ones and the lean ones the hard face cabdrivers,

the triose know his face. his faded blue sweater and his profile like [inaudible]. his cow lick in black mop of hair. [inaudible] johnitto should be only asleep. you know the place the apartment building on 17th street through the lobby door with busted lock under the sign that says no loitering past the mildew that curdled your brain up 3riccety stairs belly up below the broken window. in bed the mattress on the floor he shares with his older sisters johnitto will dreechl a baseball glove or the perfect tail for a

kite. [inaudible] 24th street with the one seed always frozen near the bottom. but the family needs more than dreams that's why my mom, sisters travelled by bus pulled by something stronger than destiny to this 2 room battleground of survival. this minute as he treads mission mama in the apartment on a sewing machine, zig-zagy threads fine as spider webs running down pants late into the appeal yellow hours of her seemingly endless nights. the 2 sisters with fingers delicate as ballerinas stitch beads tiny as drops that will sell for